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A Storm of Kickstarters

Forget about April Showers and May Flowers. February has brought with it a virtual tsunami of kickstarters. It’s a terrible thing really. Lots of good properties out there vying for your investment, but there is always only so much to go around. If Kickstarter is going to become the new driver for RPG production, you business managers need to start talking with one another.

If you’re a regular visitor here, you know that I’ve been looking forward to the 7th Sea and the KULT kickstarters. But I definitely want to shine a spotlight on a couple of other very intriguing properties.

Down to its final hours as of this posting. While WWI roleplaying isn’t really my thing, I gotta put this out their for Savage Worlds. It’s one of my favorite RPGs. Shane Hensley and his crew do great work and always bring their A-game to every project and product launch. They’ve done a fantastic job of turning their kickstarters into events, and Weird War I is no exception with a slew of juicy, delicious physical aids like cards, tokens, dice, hell even a canvas messenger bag! So check it out and hurry before its all over but the cryin’.

Dude. It’s Conan. Yes, the old schoolers are pissed about the Doom Pool but…it’s Conan. Everything about this one looks beautiful. The people behind it seem very dedicated to shedding as much of the 1970’s pastiche as possible and distilling this one down to it’s Howardian core. So even if you are an old school gamer with no time or patience for those fancy, new-fangled silly narrative mechanics, the lore and fluff should be burning a hole somewhere in your brain. Right now it’s sitting at $317k with 18 days to go. You can check out the (recently updated!!!) Quickstart Rules here to get a taste.

Biggest Tabletop RPG kickstarter in history (ok, that’s only going back a few years but its still impressive). $825k (that’s almost $800k over it’s initial pledge goal) with 12 days to go as of this posting. 7,688 backers. On track to break $1 million before it’s over. This is a new Theah, with shipping routes open to the New World, Africa, and the Middle East (and maybe the Far East before too long). Backers get early access to the quickstart preview of the rules and John Wick and his crew are listening to comments and criticism, working hard to make a game something we can all love.

The bloody avant-garde. For better or worst, Helmgast decided to turn this into a real collectors’ showcase, with some 8 different collector’s editions to suit every KULT fan (of every income bracket). The two basic packages ($25/PDF and $60/Print+PDF) are both quite reasonable though based on what we’ve seen of the production values. The real downside here is the developers are still playing coy with the rules system. Sure, it’s based on the Apocalypse World engine but appears to make some very radical changes. At least Archetypes and Playbooks appear to be similar enough. Right now its sitting at $126k with 30 days to go. If the Illusion cracks enough to reveal a glimpse at the rules behind the game, you can bet I’ll have something to say about it.